Cisco Co-Selling Made Simple: Activate

In my last blog Co-Selling Made Simple, you may have read about the major shift in the market indicating that a majority of Information Technology (IT) spend is now being influenced by new customer buyers and how Cisco has solved for this market shift by accelerating its momentum by Co-Selling with our partner ecosystem.

Co-Selling Made Simple: Setting the Stage

A multi-partner collaborative sales engagement between Cisco and its partner ecosystem, Co-Selling’s goal is to deliver a differentiated joint customer outcome. By surrounding our customer challenges with the right partner ecosystem, the entire Co-Sell team builds relationships with new customer buyers in the accounts and according to Cisco data can increase the Co-Sell team’s deal size by an average of 6X and software mix by 2X.

Co-Selling Made Simple: Part 2

Activate is the first of three steps in the Ecosystem Co-Sell Go-to-Market (GTM) sales execution, followed by Accelerate and Scale. This important first step sets up an Ecosystem partner such as an ISV or domain consultant, etc., to Co-Sell with Cisco. This includes developing digital accounts to track opportunities, digital sales plans to define sales targets and pipeline growth building activities, and how to drive sales awareness and enablement content to cultivate joint offers that scale to Cisco sales growing Co-Sell pipeline.

A Deeper Dive into Activate

Activating as an ecosystem partner is a simple three-step process:

Enrollment – Before an Ecosystem partner can be enrolled in our Co-Sell GTM, they must be registered as a Cisco Partner. They can then enroll in the Cisco Partner Program, where they can select applicable roles as an Advisor, Developer, Provider or Integrator. Once a partner has chosen an applicable role and achieved minimum Select status, they will then be eligible to be invited to Digital Co-Sell. During the Digital Co-Sell enrollment phase, partners are educated on the Cisco Co-Sell Market Development Funds (MDF) Incentive that may be available. Once this has been completed, they can be digitally enrolled in our Co-Sell opportunity management system called PXP Digital Co-Sell. This is where they will focus their opportunity collaboration with both Cisco and Channel partner sellers. This is also an important opportunity to showcase co-sell collaboration and contribution to all partnerships engaged.
Co-Sell Plan – Next, a Cisco Co-Sell Business Development Manager (BDM) begins to quarterback a Co-Sell Plan with all the identified partners. This Co-Sell Plan contains the joint value proposition, Greater Together story, and target markets. The Co-Sell sales targets are tracked digitally and are accessible to each partner connected to the plan. Co-Sell Plans are reviewed quarterly for progress and to identify pipeline growth and win stories.
Co-Sell Ready – Once the Enrollment and Co-Sell Plan phase are complete, it’s time to get Co-Sell Ready! This involves generating the right enablement content to introduce and cascade Co-Sell partnership awareness across all target customer industries and every sales team that will be engaged. Emphasis is placed on why the Greater Together Co-Sell partnership is critical to joint customers, defining the compelling solutions stack, and how each Seller will benefit.

A Critical Step to Co-Selling

In conclusion, the Activate step is a critical path to Co-Selling and is the prerequisite to the next step—Accelerate—where Co-Sell pipeline is built. The upfront organization in the Activate step is the first step in surrounding our customers with the right partners, bringing the most valuable solutions to them, and achieving their business outcomes. It captures and recognizes the value of each ecosystem partner Co-Selling together. It speeds time to market, sharpens the Greater Together story for our joint customers and sets up the Co-Sell partnership to expand to new markets.

Ecosystem Co-Selling is a Big Deal!

There are billions of dollars in potentially untapped new buyer opportunities and Cisco Ecosystem Co-Sell is the key to accessing it!

Be on the lookout for the next Ecosystem Co-Sell blog in the series—Accelerate. And in the meantime, check out our Cisco Co-Sell SalesConnect Page for more information on becoming part of Ecosystem Co-Sell at Cisco!